browngirl

A Yuletide Treat I wrote for

the_alchemist. Should have been longer, but such is life.

Title: And the Spare
Fandom: Shakespeare's Histories (set before Henry VI)
Characters/Pairing: Richard, Duke of Gloucester
Summary: Richard stands halfway up the quay, alone.
Rating: PG at most.
Disclaimer: These characters and the historical personages they are based upon are not mine.

The seagulls squawk and scream loudly, their noise carrying sharply over the endless crash of the waves as they wheel round each other in the blue seaside sky. Richard tilts his head back, watching the white arrow-wedges whirl, watching them attack and bully each other, pecking and diving, a flashing silver fish tossed from one to the next. They must be siblings, he idly thinks, to know each other so well, to know exactly where to strike, to inflict pain savage enough to provoke such harsh angry cries.

The white gulls spin around the topmasts of the white-sailed ship at the end of the quay. Richard stands halfway up the quay, alone between the milling gaggle of soldiers warding the gate off the road and the flock of servants ringed round his mother and his brother George, her voice echoing in every ear and off the skies above. The sea is loud and the seagulls louder, but Richard's mother is a natural force herself; in pagan days she would have been a queen or a goddess, and she surely will not settle for much less honor under Christ. As her voice rises and falls in instruction to her second son, Richard can catch the occasional word or three, though none of them are meant for him.

George, after all, is the precious spare. Edward's the heir, his place sealed in red by Father's and Edmund's blood, and if he falls George will bear the princedom and become the King of England. Once the Rose of York is ascendant. Once the endless war is won. Once their mother has finally had her glut of revenge, though likely heaven will be smashed and earth gone to ashes first.

Richard? Is nothing, as yet. Not an attendant beside him, not a word from his mother beyond her indifferently delivered expectation that he will 'support George' however he might. Richard rolls his shoulders in his tunic as he follows the seagulls' flight. He is stronger than his family knows, and that strength is not for them.

So when his mother and his brother at last pace up the quay, their private chatter done and their gaggle trailing behind, Richard sets his face in a sweet, false smile and thinks on victory and France and his own head bestowed with a crown.